


to know what it is when at last it comes

by samarqand



Category: Daredevil (Comics), Marvel 616, Punisher (Comics)
Genre: Angst and Porn, Catholic Guilt, Clothed Sex, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-28
Updated: 2014-01-28
Packaged: 2018-01-10 09:56:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1158243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samarqand/pseuds/samarqand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt reaches out to Frank in a different way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to know what it is when at last it comes

When will he stop?

If he had stopped this after Frank had saved him, the two of them would have gone on to follow routine as before, toward the next somewhere they need to be, and the next, the next, alone.

Matt knows when the moment passed, the moment he should’ve stopped. It should’ve been after Frank had fished him out of the frozen East River, Brooklynside, stoic docks and rust-scented tanks and dust-laden warehouses and the endlessness of cold. 

He should’ve stopped this after Frank hauled him up, and he had sprawled unceremoniously on the pavement. Should’ve hurried through the coughing and given Frank a brisk nod and picked his numb, fumbling body up to go —

where?

Allowing Frank to escort him to one of his alleyway storages of clothing, then guide him past some creaking egress doors and down into the stolid silence of an underground safe house, was a mistake. The steaming shower was a mistake. Staying for hot instant coffee that Frank handed to him like a fact —

It shouldn’t have happened. He should’ve slumped in a neighborhood confessional booth until the shivering stopped. Should’ve sat on a snow-dusted bench, understanding he deserved the weather’s bite.

Language is dead. Narrative has flipped the switch and cast conscience in immense dark. And Matt has scrambled like he’s drowning again onto Frank’s lap, onto him. Careful not to caress but to overwhelm Frank, he presses Frank firmly back against the wall. 

Starchy, immaculate sheets rustle beneath them — nothing lived in, no comfort in this cot. Frank does his aching and bleeding on the makeshift surgeon’s table across the way. The residual antiseptic’s burn insinuates itself between them when Matt’s mouth leaves Frank’s with a soft click. Frank holds Matt’s arms with a gloved grip, tempered.

Tidy. Utilitarian.

Frank is encouraging messes.

If he squirms his hips against Frank’s, learning each angle they shouldn’t be fitting, he draws a sound from Frank that is bone-deep, and as faint.

It’s almost enough. Want curls in Matt like thirst. He crushes his mouth against Frank’s again.

Teeth catch tongue.

The tongue wants to confess, but language is dead. 

Matt nips at Frank’s slick bottom lip, marking the hot seconds he can keep him close.

Against reason, he wants Frank closer.

The rosary’s beads chirp and roll in Matt’s pocket when he moves, someone asking after him.

And when Frank lifts Matt off him just high enough, enough to flick open the button on his slacks and draw the zipper down each metal tooth so slowly Matt shakes,

and when he begins to drag Matt’s slacks down off his hips,

the sharp angle of the crucifix at the end of the beads begins to drag down his thigh, too.

Matt recoils with a slow breath and zips himself up again.

Frank mirrors him, moving to erase intimacy between them. This is where they should stop.

Matt reaches for Frank’s hand in reply. He guides it to palm against the inseam of his slacks.

Lord knows he’s tried everything else with this man. Gets so tiring, all the aching he does for Frank, all the hurting and chasing.

No excuse.

It’s no excuse, just another transgression to add to the list: the way he runs lips and teeth over Frank’s gloved knuckles. The way he grapples with Frank’s ungainly utility belt and loses to it, his hands stalling when he starts to rut against Frank’s hand in earnest.

Frank’s forehead touches against Matt’s shoulder as if he must remind himself the human form is corporeal. 

Burning.

Burn the word that wants to be shouted. _Shouldn’t_.

It makes sense to hold, but in thinking it, what it means, Matt’s hands falter. His palms, outstretched, flatten against the chipped cement wall behind Frank. He dips his head, mouthing against Frank’s temple, hardened jaw with its aggravating stubble, and the parted corner of his lips. Then Frank turns his head and kisses him with no art or compunction. Only plain-stated want.

It drags another fitful noise out of Matt. Why give in to Frank’s demands? Why give Frank anything? Why not stop here?

He grabs and claws and tugs at that utility belt with his unsteady, desperate hands. Then he’s got it finally, the clasp, and he shucks down all that compartmentalized war and unzips Frank and shoves his coarse pants down until Frank’s thigh holsters arrest him mid-intention, but it’s enough. It’ll do.

Stop here.

Matt inhales, meaning to speak.

His hand drops instead to drag along the heavy outline of Frank’s arousal, feeling him through his briefs.

The KA-BAR knife on Frank’s thigh holster digs into Matt’s inner thigh when Frank’s hips hitch forward. Matt balances himself, free hand settling on Frank’s chest over the Kevlar and the skull’s flaking paint. He doesn’t stop just yet. Frank’s breathing edges. Pulse quickens, tried. He tilts his head so he’s looking up at Matt as silently as the praying do when they beseech the saints —

Matt wants to replace his hand with his mouth. Taste him through the fabric, wreck him, make him shake just like Matt is.

God, but who is wrecking who now?

Frank parts Matt’s lips, thumb coaxing against his chin and bottom lip. He leans up to kiss Matt, to press his mouth against the hollow of Matt’s neck where what’s left of his cologne lingers.

How many have perished under those hands?

What the Hell is it Matt is doing now, but that?

What is he doing but leaning into Frank’s grasp, but wanting to devour Frank. But wanting to fuck, long and close. Closer. But wanting to tame Frank and to drive him wild. But wanting to splay his fingers between Frank’s shoulder blades and feel every inch of movement and memorize it all as a mnemonic for want. But wanting to crawl out of his own skin. But wanting to stop thinking, to do it, to just stop.

They need to stop here.

He realizes abruptly that he has stopped. He has gone still. Frank is looking up at him again, hands calmly retreating from Matt as though he’s been expecting this.

“No,” Frank says on Matt’s behalf. The suddenness vanishes all pretense. They both wait on the other, frozen.

No. 

“ _Yes_ ,” says Matt. 

Pitching against Frank, he clasps his hands behind Frank’s head, fistful of Frank’s dark hair, body taut and ringing against the other’s, moving, he says yes.

“Yes,” he gasps against Frank’s mouth. Frank wrestles him off just far enough, just enough; unzips his slacks again, but leaves them loose on his hips this time.

Yes, wrong answer.

Frank dips a hand beneath Matt’s clothes and grasps him and strokes, leather and relentless rhythm. Matt’s hips stutter — he speaks his thrumming need in code through his fingers, twisting-slackening-petting-tugging at Frank’s hair. His thigh brushes in tandem against Frank’s arousal. Frank’s socks rasp against the crumpled sheets as his toes curl.

When Frank locks an arm around Matt’s waist and tips him backward to fall flat against the creaking cot, there’s no mystery to the agonized little smile that alights on Matt’s face. 

There’s no explaining away the crucifix that falls away from his pocket, the way Frank’s head inclines toward its ceramic little sounds, the way he scoops it up and piles it carefully on the stand next to the cot, and the way he slips the loose KA-BAR from its holster to place it right alongside, like an offering.

*

After all this, Matt approaches the egress door at the other end of the safe house, pressing his hand to it and feeling around him the chill leaking in from the neglected engine repair outside. 

The strange sugar-whisper of snow whisked from railings and signage. The howl of the wind that precedes their soft flight.

He ponders finally, finally embracing Frank.

He makes one false start, and that is to think he could even turn to look back. Pressing his hand to the rosary safe again in his pocket, Matt opens the door and walks into the snowy early morning.

He rushes back into the city and his small world in the Kitchen. Waits to stop shaking, blames the cold. Pours freshly ground coffee. Drinks it more bitter than he can stand. Wonders about the saints and where they go when he’s met with silence. Needs to change and go to work like everyone else.

He picks up a couple croissants on the way. At the office, Foggy nabs the chocolate one. 

Matt smiles up at the ceiling as he removes his coat.

Think of now. Only right now.

Sip of tea. Ritual. Open his desk drawer and drop the rosary inside it. He pushes it shut with his hip.

“Where were you? Long night?” Foggy asks after a first bite of croissant.

“Punisher,” Matt murmurs. The word grows black on his tongue.

Foggy whistles low. “On the bright side, no nicks. Doesn’t look like you’ve endured anything but the cold.”

He knows Foggy, knows he watches for anything to worry over — limp, a wince, a dark expression.

Maybe he finds something in the way Matt doesn’t look anything at all.

“I always thought,” Foggy ventures with an offhand shrug, “that something was going to give with that guy. With all of you out for him for so long, he’d either get spooked out of town, or — something would stick. It’s unbelievable to me that nothing has.”

Matt shakes his head.

“You know what I mean, Matty?”

“I know what you mean, Foggy.”

“Is there any reaching him? After all this time?”

Matt places his emptied hands against the freezing glass of a window. Just stop, he beseeches. _Stop_. That’s it.

“I wouldn't know. I don't think about him much."

Over his shoulder, he gives Foggy a smile like he, too, is impossible to take apart, like he knows how to leave behind the things he cannot save.


End file.
